A member of the Noah's Ark Ministries International claims to be examining Noah's Ark in Turkey.

about this time every year, something sensational happens…literally. every spring, as dig season approaches, we are treated to a little hoax disguised as hope. every spring, faith is once again used to sell something, and every year, science pays the price in the form of a reduced credibility at the hands of pseudo-scientists, who peddle their claims and cheapen the name of science.

i am speaking, of course, about the annual, sensational claims by some group that purports to have discovered the ark of the covenant, noah’s ark, the true cross of christ, or some other biblical relic that is supposed to prove once and for all that the narratives recorded in the bible are true. this year is no exception, but this time it appears that something far more sinister may be at work. late-breaking news indicates that the whole thing may be a hoax.

an evangelical group out of hong kong calling itself noah’s ark ministries international, and its partner organization, the media evangelism limited are claiming to all who will listen (except scholars) that they have discovered noah’s ark. their claim is based upon their ‘discovery’ of wooden ‘rooms’ or compartments atop turkey’s mt. ararat. they claim that it must be the ark because no one would possibly build a building at that altitude. they claim to have carbon-14 samples, but won’t reveal who performed them. and of course, they can’t tell us where the secret location of the site is, because, well…it’s a secret. still, according to the sun, group member yeung wing-cheung says:

It’s not 100 per cent that it is Noah’s Ark, but we think it is 99.9 per cent that this is it.

well, allow me to explore that .1%. in fact, let me just come right out and say it:no, no you didn’t find noah’s ark.

In 1987, a group of young Christians in Hong Kong envisioned a society where multi-media businesses would proliferate, and they saw the chance to capitalize on the advance technologies to serve the society. Their vision gave birth to an organization, known as “The Media Evangelism” (TME). The Media Evangelism Limited was officially incorporated in Hong Kong in 1991.

Vision & Mission

The Media Evangelism Limited is a charitable Christian organization committed to building a Christian media presence by using every modern means of communication to promote the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Our missions are:

To take the message of our Lord Jesus Christ to all by means of high quality audio and visual products and services.

To enhance the moral and spiritual fabric of our society through creative media.

To pull together the collective wisdom of Evangelical Christians who are talented and gifted in media arts, and to collaborate with other Christian groups for the advance of the Kingdom of God.

Lost in the Noah's Ark

as one might expect, the group filmed the expedition and now has a documentary movie to sell (note the director’s name: yeung wing-cheung). it is also interesting that noah’s ark ministries international runs a noah’s ark theme park and needs to sell tickets. of course, you could make even more money if you host an exhibition entitled, ‘lost in the noah’s ark’ and advertised it with bizarre posters. and, of course, the whole marketing must be kicked off in a coordinated manner. according to their web site:

March, 2010
The “We Touched Noah’s Ark: The Search for A Carpenter’s Heart” Evangelistic Campaign was launched. Worldwide press conferences, exhibitions and sharing are carried out to spread the Gospel through the Noah’s Ark discovery.

follow the money and follow the ideology. every ark expedition is about the same thing: raising funds and spreading a fundamentalist christian ideology. this may all be well and good if you’re a ministry, but for a group feigning to be archaeologists, it’s a dead giveaway.

my colleague and co-chair of asor‘s media relations committee, dr. eric cline of george washington university, appeared on good morning america wednesday, april 28, 2010 and later on fox news on thursday, april 29, and discussed the group’s claims. dr. cline mocked the ‘99.9%’ claim, incurring the wrath and claims of bias and unfairness over at cbn (which means he’s got it right).

rather than ridicule or bash them, dr. cline addressed the fundamental archaeological methods that are lacking with noah’s ark ministries international (the name still cracks me up). they are keeping the location of the find secret, haven’t invited any scientists to provide outside verification, and haven’t revealed the source of the carbon-14 data they claim they have. as i said in an interview with rich buhler on 740 am kbrt this afternoon, any credible excavation knows that it must do the following:

reveal the location. all credible excavations publish when and where they will be digging. in fact, they are usually begging for volunteers. but, this group has not yet even revealed the location of their find. here’s a rule of thumb to live by: any time someone promises you, ‘i have evidence that will prove that the bible is true, but i can’t show it to you,’ be suspicious.

publish your data and get outside verification and corroboration. all credible excavations publish their data and make it available for peer-review and cross-examination. this is usually done at a professional conference. this is how scholarship works. this group has not done this.

announce to scholars first. it is not enough to make a press release direct to the public. those who publicize their finds with direct-to-the-media marketing campaigns and bypass scholars do so because they rely on the buzz of the media and know that the scholars will end their 15 minutes of fame before it starts. they prey on the curiosity of the public, and hope that no one pays attention to scholars’ rebuttal on the back pages of the same newspapers and websites that ran the initial story in the headlines. (see: foxnews, msnbc, nat geo, abc, etc.)

this is how the academy works. and this is how it should work. there should be a system of checks and balances between the academy and institutions of faith. it keeps both groups honest.

archaeologists look at these untrained, amateur, evangelical groups doing archaeology and making claims about noah’s ark with well-deserved suspicion. it is the exact same suspicion that evangelicals would show towards a group of untrained, amateur hindu explorers claiming to have found a mace, a chakra and a conch shell in kurukshetra that prove the existence of the hindu god vishnu. just because you find reindeer bones at the north pole does not mean you have proved the existence of santa claus. and, just because you find a boat doesn’t mean you’ve proved the flood. and in this case, noah’s ark ministries international hasn’t even demonstrated that they’ve found a boat! they’ve found wood. finding a wooden structure on a mountain in turkey does not mean you’ve discovered noah’s ark. it means you’ve found a wooden building. it could be a barn. it could be a small cottage. it could be a tool shed.

however, this story may be even more sinister than a simple sensationalist claim. there is evidence that it may have all been a hoax. an article by stephen kurczy in the christian science monitor is now claiming that fellow ark hunter, dr. randall price of liberty university, who once worked with the noah’s ark ministries international group and was the archaeologist on the chinese-led team in 2008 when this alleged discovery was first made, may have been participants in an elaborate hoax. according to the article:

“If the world wants to think this is a wonderful discovery, that’s fine. My problem is that, in the end, proper analysis may show this to be a hoax and negatively reflect how gullible Christians can be,” he says. He says he has “difficulties with a number of issues related to the evidence at hand.”

Price declined to elaborate. However, a leaked email from Price – which he confirms that he wrote – shows that he has reason to believe that a group of local Kurdish men trucked wood up to the mountain and staged an elaborate hoax for the Chinese team.

A group of Kurdish workers “are said to have planted large wood beams taken from an old structure in the Black Sea area (where the photos were originally taken) at the Mt. Ararat site. … During the summer of 2009 more wood was planted inside a cave at the site. The Chinese team went in the late summer of 2009 (I was there at the time and knew about the hoax) and was shown the cave with the wood and made their film,” Price writes in the email.

I also got an email today from one of Randall Price’s students. The email contains a message from Dr. Price about this expedition. (Dr. Price, as some of you may recall, has been doing a lot of searching for the ark lately.) Here is an excerpt from his message:

I was the archaeologist with the Chinese expedition in the summer of 2008 and was given photos of what they now are reporting to be the inside of the Ark. I and my partners invested $100,000 in this expedition (described below) which they have retained, despite their promise and our requests to return it, since it was not used for the expedition. The information given below is my opinion based on what I have seen and heard (from others who claim to have been eyewitnesses or know the exact details).

To make a long story short: this is all reported to be a fake. The photos were reputed to have been taken off site near the Black Sea, but the film footage the Chinese now have was shot on location on Mt. Ararat. In the late summer of 2008 ten Kurdish workers hired by Parasut, the guide used by the Chinese, are said to have planted large wood beams taken from an old structure in the Black Sea area (where the photos were originally taken) at the Mt. Ararat site. In the winter of 2008 a Chinese climber taken by Parasut’s men to the site saw the wood, but couldn’t get inside because of the severe weather conditions. During the summer of 2009 more wood was planted inside a cave at the site. The Chinese team went in the late summer of 2009 (I was there at the time and knew about the hoax) and was shown the cave with the wood and made their film. As I said, I have the photos of the inside of the so-called Ark (that show cobwebs in the corners of rafters – something just not possible in these conditions) and our Kurdish partner in Dogubabyazit (the village at the foot of Mt. Ararat) has all of the facts about the location, the men who planted the wood, and even the truck that transported it.

so it appears that the whole thing may have been rigged. an ark-eologist got duped by other ark-eologists. this is simply sad.

the problem with this is that both religion and science lose. people of faith look like a bunch of liars that will do or say anything to prove their faith, including lie, cheat, steal, and rig an elaborate hoax to raise money and spread their faith. but because they use science to make their claim, religious fundamentalists will claim that scientists are elaborate tricksters that manipulate data in an attempt to prove the bible is false. and somewhere in between these two extremes are honest people of faith and honest scientists trying to have an honest debate about the feasibility and historicity of a flood and an ark, questioning why different numbers of animals on the ark are given in the bible, (gen 6:19 vs. gen 7:2), and how wood could have survived and not decomposed over time. these arguments are lost because both extremes-the religious fundamentalists and the militant agnostics-retreat to their extreme positions, and the media loves extreme anything.

science and faith both lose. both can co-exist, but episodes like this one don’t help.

this unfortunate episode also reveals that there are two levels of ‘sensational’. the first is the sensationalism that we find when someone makes an unsubstantiated archaeological claim. whenever someone finds a piece of wood on top of a mountain in turkey, someone is always sure to claim they’ve found noah’s ark. there is no evidence, but this speculation is sure to raise eyebrows, and so someone always irresponsibly makes that claim. but, there is a far more egregious form of sensationalism: the hoax. this is when evidence is planted so that said sensational claim can be made. this hoax should be met with outrage, and both noah’s ark ministries international, their sponsors, and the local turkish government officials should be sanctioned for their participation in the charade.

Hong Kong people are recognized as Honorable Citizens in Agri Province of Turkey for the first time

so no, you didn’t find noah’s ark. but you did get to be honorable citizens for the day. and you got your name in the paper. and you got you picture taken. and you’ve become the latest chapter in the seemingly never ending story of the quest for things that we’ll never find, if they ever existed at all.

and one more thing: my hat is off to all of the scholars and the cadre of bloggers that came forward to research this story and expose this charade. hats off to the news organizations that quickly posted responses to the initial story like time and the christian science monitor. and hats off to randall price, whom i previously ripped in this very space, for admitting his mistake and exposing this nonsense. you did the right thing and i respect that.

It would be sad for everyone if it is a fake but the
Navarro story seemed convincing – plus there are
satellite photographs which show a structure at about this height.
If the Bible is true and I am 100% convinced it is then
the Ark should be on the mountains of Ararat somewhere.

Well if the Ark is a myth we would not be able to trust
in the Bible – so I don’t believe it is a myth.
You could not make up the story of the Ark.
Billions of creatures were killed instantly and encased
in the sedimentary layers – only a global flood could do this. You could not have thousands of local floods.
Think about it. This sort of thing is not happening today
except in isolated cases like Mt St Helens which if you
look at the sediments and fossil trees actually
adds evidence to Noah’s flood.
A creature must be covered in sediment quickly in order to fossilise.

VERY SIMPLE
C14 dating of diamonds coal oil and gas around 40,000 years instead of 5950 years. There was less C14 at the time of the flood – it is still building up.
How do evolutionists reconcile 200 million years with
40,000 years – slight difference – what ????

Bob, if I were you I would cool down! You have something good in your article, you need to be less religious in your approach because you are acting like a pseudo-science worshiper. Science is not about God and faith. If it needs faith to do science, science becomes a religion. Do not use your religious fever to discuss science.
A scientist is at best a humble skeptic. He doesn’t deal with faith or God. S/He is not opinionated, but is objective at all times and also respectfully open to dialogue. S/He is emotion free and never arrogantly jumps to conclusions and always leave room for the test of time, objectively waiting and hoping for new discoveries that may throw new light to what s/he understands. A scientist spends equal amount of time and effort to disprove of his hypothesis as much as to prove it. Your negative attitude and emotions of religious/zealot proportions, that rejects at a 101% level any opinion that is in contrary to yours and jumping to your long “convinced” final conclusions is an evidence of yours, at best, pseudo-scientist’s point of view. This arrogance demonstrates that you are playing God, holding the absolute truth. Science tries to find the physical truth that can be touched and seen. To try to discover if there is an Ark is only an effort to find things that can be varified. Why so much emotional stuff? Humble yourself and open a respectable dialogue with this group. If you do not have the time, scientific background or humility to do so, refrain from your pseudo-scientific comments. I am interested to fine out what they really discovered.
In order to be good at what you wrote, please read writings by and about the late Antony Flew who was a great objective truth seeker, died April 8, 2010 if you want to be a sincere truth seaker. You seem to appear like a religious believer of your pseudo-science god. You have your religious convictions and they have theirs. Why put them down and made them devils? This is a simple quest for material things not a conclusion about a religious faith. They were humble enough to say that they were only 99.9% sure. But you are 101% sure that they are wrong!! The way you approach this is totally religious and this way, you will never find the facts.
Excuse me if I do not answer to any further comments. I am too busy.

I don’t know how my colleagues will react when they see my comments on this blog. But mostly likely they won’t read it.
I saw the news conference on TV in Hong Kong. But before that my colleague had already told me to watch for some spectacular news on Sunday, just keep your ears open for the news. It so happens that the husband of this colleague of mine works with haha Noah’s Ark Ministries. He told all of us teachers on Saturday that they’ve found Noah’s Ark… all the stuff written on that site. Well I kind of walked out on their conversation because they were saying things like the enemy is not going to like this, they’ll be attacked on all sides so pray…
The way I see it is, no matter what you tell them, it’s not going to make a difference because by telling them the truth you’ve just sided with the devil, attacking them.
What’s more they’ve already brainwashed the people to believe only what they say by spreading “attacks from the evil one” before the news conference. Now the people are truth-proofed. Over here in Hong Kong, Christians are so well taught that no truth can penetrate their thoughts. And these religious leaders like it that way, keep their religious congregation stupid.

[…] hoax again – follow the money. It begins with these words: A polite but angry archaeologist, Dr. Robert R. Cargill lays short waste to claims of noah’s ark ministries international that this group out of Hong […]

What is sadder is that this so called “news” made it onto the major US news networks (ABC, NBC, CBS) along with the group’s proclamation that it was 99.9% certain to be Noah’s Ark. Talk about being able to spread the “news” without anyone challenging it to see whether it has a leg to stand on.

I guess everyone has learned a few things from the politicians on how to manipulate the public. Tell a big lie (e.g. Obama is Muslim), get it out on TV and repeat as many times as possible, any news that reveals the real truth (he’s a Christian) gets little coverage so the “untruth” becomes the “truth” in the minds of many who never saw or want to believe the “real truth”.

I noticed in the film, the white “dust-like” or “snow-like” stuff on the wood was actually Styrofoam beads! Why on earth were they so many such beads in the “ark?” Unless, they were used to look like snow blowing into the cave?! Anyway, thanks for the thorough analysis of the deception.

I am astonished that so many people think that we as a collective earth could find Noah Ark: if Noah’s Ark existed or not it not the question. The structure could not have possible survived the elements, so any piece of wood of an ancient variety could be claimed to be Noah’s Ark. Yes, people of faith can make scientific discoveries; as long as their faith does not try to influence the science of those discoveries. Being a Historian you realize that history can be subjective according to who recorded the history of that period, but you can not change facts to fit your conclusions. I teach classes in genealogy, and I had a Librarian give a tour to my students of the Libraries various resources. The Librarian had invited the local genealogical society’s vice president to give a little talk. I was aghast when she told my students in convicted certainty that she was a descendant of biblical Noah. I could not believe that someone would profess to be a genealogist of any level and think they could trace their lineage back to Noah. Then after the tour I found out that she was a minister’s wife. Instead of a spade in one had, she had long ago dead people and a bible to try to cement her belief.
I guess my point in this rambling is that not just scientific field’s are being usurped by the need for faith based validation, but also America’s #1 growing hobby.

As to using quotes from currently accepted versions of ancient books that report to represent historical quotes: the plain truth is that there’s no way to know what Yeshua said and did.

All we know is that some stories were written down in a number of versions, and that the earliest versions we have of these writings are something like eighteenth generations copies. The copies have been altered, the original stories were subject to personal bias and probably altered as well as they were passed along.

You may want to look at “Jesus Misquoted” to get a scholarly take on biblical texts from Bart D. Ehrman, a former born-again biblical literalist who had to alter his understanding while on his way to becoming one of the world’s most renowned biblical scholars.

When I heard about this new ark discovery all I could think was ‘here they go again with the making shit up for their religion.’ And of course, so it was.

The ignorance and dishonesty of some Christians is frankly astonishing.

Of course, they’ve been faking shit since Josephus and likely before that, so it comes very naturally to them now.

I even think they themselves believe it all. Like when they decide to fake something, they are thinking ‘I know I’m faking this evidence, but since I KNOW and am ABSOLUTELY POSITIVE that the Ark was real, all I’m doing is getting others to believe in what is true and good… so what’s one little lie in the grand scheme of things? Hey, I’m even helping them with my lie, since if it gets them to believe in God then they’ll be SAVED. So it’s worth any effort…’

Wasn’t it Eusebius that said something like “Lying to the people is acceptable so long as it deepens their faith?’ And let’s not forget that he was Constantine’s biographer, the very man that wrote about Constantine seeing a cross in the sky etc.

So the entire faith is based in a lie made up by macchiavellian cynical men to gain and hold onto power by making the people easy to control. Period.

The Great Lie that keeps re-telling itself.

And look around. Christian pseudomorality (based in coercion rather than empathy) has polluted the entire world.

Nicely done. If I may offer a small suggestion: I don’t know what you have against capital letters, but their lack detracts from your writing. I’m sure you’re quite well educated, even outside the field of archeology, but the lack of caps belies that. From where I sit, it seems silly to impugn your credibility, even a bit, by adopting non-standard punctuation.

People are saying that I’m attacking people with my comments but I’m just addressing a general issue among evangelicals here. People are too eager to believe what other prominent evangelicals tell them.

As many have said it’s not the first time people have claimed to have found Noah’s Ark and it won’t be the last. Just as people have been searching for Eden.

Recently, I’ve learned that Eden means delight.
BDB Definition: Eden = “pleasure”
That popped my bubble. I thought if we find Eden then we’d find the tree of life then we’d have life eternal.
When I put the word ‘delight’ in place of Eden that changes my whole perspective of Gen 2.
That the GOD had planted everything in delight and put man in the midst of his delight.

When I searched; BDB Definition: Ararat = “the curse reversed: precipitation of curse”
So Noah’s ark rested on the mountains of the curse reversed?
What curse? The ground was cursed in Gen 3:17 and Gen 8:21 says ‘I’ll never again curse the ground…’

[…] Sea Scroll that purports to be a list of buried treasure. And he minced no words last week when he tore into the new ark claims on his blog. Cline, for his part, got himself on "Good Morning America" and Fox News and was quoted […]

How ANYONE can believe in the preposterous story of Noah’s Ark in this age is simply beyond me. This is the worst possible example of fiction in so many ways. First, the mathematics of a man collecting two of every species on earth already invalidate the story from the very start. Even allowing only one minute per species pair, it would still take thousands of years. If you say that he collected them with some divine assistance, then there’s your next plot hole – why involve Noah in the first place? Just do it all by magic (assuming you are stupid enough to believe in such magic). Then there’s the fact that there simply isn’t enough water to flood the planet – or the fact that most of the animals in the world were in parts of the world that were completely unknown to the people of Noah’s time. Still, I’m only scratching the surface of the idiocy of this story. Santa Claus delivering presents to every child in the world by coming down the chimney makes just as much sense.

Love your site!! Your blogs are full of facts and wit– and your readers’ posts are oh-so entertaining, to boot!! Absolutely hysterical!! I love the posts questioning YOUR scientific background… as if YOU were the uneducated nutbag…

[…] Sea Scroll that purports to be a list of buried treasure. And he minced no words last week when he tore into the new ark claims on his blog. Cline, for his part, got himself on "Good Morning America" and Fox News and was quoted […]

Noah’s ARK to about 400 man years to build ( assuming the women did the cooking etc) was about
half the size of the Queen Mary and needed about 15000 pairs of original “kinds eg like two dogs” with enough DNA to branch out into all the different kinds of dogs eg wolves dingos poodles etc. It was only air breathing land animals that were BROUGHT to the Ark by God.
The Ark could easily hold this amount of animals.
The earth was together “all in one place” and the population had enough time to come and jeer Noah a
“preacher of righteousness”.
With fossils at the tops of mountains and billions of suddenly killed animals there has definitely been a worldwide flood.
There IS enough water to cover the whole earth. Most
of the water came from underground sources.
God could have taken Noah into heaven but required a
human demonstration of faith.

It is very well explained in The Genesis Flood by Henry
Morris ( a water engineer).

You should do more reading and come up with a more reasoned argument against it.

No insects or sea animals were required.

With semi hibernation these animals could be fed
by 8 people.

The anti diluvian races were clever – google up the
technology that has been found in coal etc such as
a spark plug.

Greg – your fairy story is that 2 to 3 billion characters
of DNA code formed in a muddy pool just like that.
All the scientists in the world cannot produce a single
bit of living DNA let alone billions of code.
Most scientists, believers or not, no longer believe this
nonsense. Since Darwin thought a cell was a blob he had more excuse.
Even Dawkins used the word “design” of biological complexity with the producer of “Expelled” interview. But he said it was designed in outer space as if this made it rational.

i genuinely have no comment. a spark plug in coal? the data don’t support the underground water claim. by ‘all in one place’ do you mean pangaea, which was 250 million years ago? again, i genuinely have no comment. -bc

No insects or sea animals were required.
—————————–
Entomology is one of my hobbies, and let me assure you all, insects were DEFINITELY necessary to be on the ark. There are over two million species of insect on this planet, from the poles (ice insects, grylloblattidea) to the tropics, where species proliferation is huge. NONE of these insects could have survived forty days of brackish water! In fact, even the heat of a human hand kills an ice insect, so how did Noah keep them alive? In a refrigerator? Noah would have had to have at least EGGS from insects all over the world, if not breeding pairs or more. And the FOOD they all eat is very particular; many insects will die if removed from their particular host plant. So they’d all need their own special foods from where they came from.
So the insects definitely all would have to be on the ark.

Here’s a real surprise though: So do all the FISH!!!

If we add forty days of rain, to the height of the tallest mountaintops, that’s over a mile of FRESH water over the entire world. So the oceans would all become BRACKISH, and all the worlds freshwater ponds and lakes would also be BRACKISH. So almost every single fish on the planet would have died.

To the tops of the mountains, er… correction, that would be a lot worse, as in five miles deep. A lot of fresh water added to the oceans.

All the world’s fishes and insects would die. There is no doubt about it.

Plus, whoever was talking about how two dogs could repopulate all the world’s many breeds of dog AND wolves, and coyotes, and dingos and so on, is unfortunately not very bright about science. It can’t happen that way; evolution takes a lot longer than two or three or ten thousand years to do such a thing. More like ten million or more.

Hey, let’s face it, the ark story is impossible on so many levels that it is reduced to a sad joke, and even sadder because so many people are ignorant enough about this world that they can believe it.

How did God save the amazon treefrogs? Or even better, the tiny delicate arrow poison frogs? They need tiny insects to eat so noah needed to raise fruitflies on the ark, but more importantly, how in tarnation could they GET to the ark from south america? Are christians so ignorant to think that all the continents were contiguous in those days? Hey, even if they’re that silly, it still wouldn’t work. How fast can a treefrog travel? And they need constant moisture all the time or they dessicate and die. Same is of course true for all amphibians.

It would take a newt like a year to travel a few miles.

How about all the world’s SNAILS? They’d all die in the flood, too.

All the world’s earthworms? Slugs? Gone.

This is an exercise in comedy, not science. I can basically keep this up all night.

And for those people that insist that all that water, much more than is on this earth, was put there by God, as in a miracle, are daft. God zapped all those trillions of gallons of water here, let it all fall to the ground, and then got rid of it? He’d have to get rid of it for the waters to recede that quickly, or indeed, at all.

So God can do all that, and not just save all the animals and a few people Himself? Why need to build a boat when God could have surely done it?

For that matter, why not just ‘say the word’ and have all the evil people in the world drop dead in their tracks? Then He wouldn’t have to go all Gunga Din on the whole world.

Oh, and where’s the geological record of such a massive world event? The most massive die-off ever and we can’t find any evidence of it?

There should be one huge layer of fossils, recent ones only a few thousand years old.

We have fossils in layers many, many times that old, and all the way up to the present, but no layer in the last ten or twenty (or fifty) thousand years like that. The last time we can see that there was a huge die-off, was the dinosaurs, at about sixty-five million years ago.

As an aside, a while back I was talking to a christian fundamentalist that believed in all this foolishness, and I was shocked to realize that this person could not get the concept that the deeper the layer of fossils is, the older it is, and therefore top layers are the youngest and as you dig down you are ‘going back in time.’

It was like I was trying to speak to them in Urdu. They couldn’t SEE it. I even tried the compost heap analogy. Nothing.

So that’s what we’re dealing with. People that can’t understand a compost heap are trying to teach us science here.

faith is not in vain if Noah’s ark didn’t exist
—————-
Faith in Noah’s ark is. And thus, faith in the accuracy of the bible as read literally is also. And since ALL WE KNOW of Jesus is from that same flawed book….

Hi Bob- Thanks for the excellent analysis. In your experience, what is the likelihood of finding wood that is relatively intact after so many thousands of years? I remember reading that boats owned by Caligula were found intact (but the Nazi’s destroyed them.) Do you believe, if an ark was found, that the wood would be in any shape recognizable?

Kristin – no problem at all if the wood has been permanently frozen – this is not a problem at these
altitudes. Even unfrozen this “Gopher” would could last a long time – it was probably tarred as well.

Faith in Noah’s ark is. And thus, faith in the accuracy of the bible as read literally is also. And since ALL WE KNOW of Jesus is from that same flawed book….

Let’s just say that it doesn’t look good for you

Note how St Brian the Godless and Defender of the Faith Charles Allan have accepted the same exact premise. That the Bible must be taken absolutely literally, and that in order for any of it to be true and for God to even exist, Noah’s Ark must exist exactly as described.

Note how St Brian the Godless and Defender of the Faith Charles Allan have accepted the same exact premise. That the Bible must be taken absolutely literally, and that in order for any of it to be true and for God to even exist, Noah’s Ark must exist exactly as described.
————————————
I didn’t say that. I just said that now we can know that the bible is not to be taken literally and that it contains many things which if taken literally, are utterly wrong. And that the Bible is the sole source of info about your God and His son Jesus. So your one source, is riddled with errors. What I meant is that THIS SHOULD MAKE YOU THINK. However, it is my experience that believers believe, and rarely think, which activity involves actually looking at the facts of the situation and not just buying into what other people (and one really old, flawed book written by men) tells you. So your response is exactly what I was expecting. I’m surprised I didn’t get more similar ones.

Try thinking. It’s not as fun as believing, but it has the advantage of not making you look like a total fool.

Randall Price never climbed with Noah’s Ark Ministries International. (Chinese/Turk Evangelist Explorers) who
claimed to have discovered Noah’s Ark. He never saw the
site. He wasn’t apart of the team when they discovered
the site.

if this is true, then randall price will be received better by scholars.
i’ll ask the question again: what evidence has this group provided to support their claims?
whether or not dr. price climbed with this group is irrelevant. it’s a hoax whether dr. price says so or not.

Saint – Name one utterly wrong thing in the Bible
———————————-
Uh, haven’t you been paying attention?

The Ark story. Genesis. Job. Leviticus. The Gospels, which weren’t even written by the apostles they’re named after. The entire book is rife with obvious errors.

The point being, even if they’re metaphorical, they’re not literally true, and we can’t really tell which are metaphor and which seem to be meant as a history of events, so basing a religion on it all is like basing a religion on Mother Goose.

I love Job, personally, because in it you have God making a bet, with the devil. So the all-loving God bets, GAMBLES, with Satan of all people, with whom He apparently has a friendly relationship, and on the line is Job’s entire life, which God systematically destroys to make a point.
Here’s the rub: What the hell was Satan THINKING? (pun intended)
What kind of a complete moron makes a bet with someone that he full well knows is OMNISCIENT?

And in that light, how did Satan manage to ever rebel against God in the first place? Answer me that one, if you can. Satan knew at the time that God, being omniscient, would have seen it coming a mile away. In fact, God would have known that Satan would eventually rebel even before He made Satan. And yet, it almost succeeded? Huh?

I guess if your entire life was spent in NOT thinking about reality, it seems to make sense. However, any child can see that it’s all a bunch of silliness.

The Bible is an old book of hebrew fables. Taking it literally is just being incredibly gullible.

First off, it’s hard to make any point for the true existence of the ark or anything about God for that matter on this blog. Everyone here is stuck inside a box that our laws of physics and math can explain what God did. Im not saying this current ark “discovery isn’t a hoax, thats not my point.

Our understanding of the universe and what God did, is in my opinion a joke. God is beyond all math and laws that we use to decipher the universe and to try to use to prove the bible and the things Yahweh did. Why does no one see this? It’s a matter of believers and non believers. Those who believe seek God’s knowledge and are shown beyond the shadow of a doubt that these things are real. and non believers laugh at this because they see this as an out and we, Christians, dont need to explain and dont need science and this is the Christian way of getting out of answering the question and non believers see this as a cop out. because their answers are all based on faith and they don’t need to answer beyond that. Precisely., we dont. because people who are pulled towards God and seek Jesus Christ are shown the answers that science and man’s physical laws can’t explain.

I don’t think christians really care anymore. if you don’t believe by now – us throwing pearls in front of pigs isn’t goint to solve anything. hear me out here folks, hear me out. When God was in town 2000 or so years ago – they accused Jesus of sedition, sorcery etc. – they didnt believe him then and there are millions who don’t believe him now. if scientists want to say that the ark didn’t exist in the first place, they could scientifically explain it away, by saying well “if the whole earth were covered in water, the humidity in the air would be so thick that we couldn’t breathe” – ive heard scientists say that before on the history channel. or ” in 40 days there is no way that that much water could have fallen to cover everything up” – physically impossible – according to man’s puny infinitesimal laws they are impossible. but they arent. God made it ok and before a flash of light could travel an inch, it was so. again God’s miracles are what he does. we dont know anything! but to those who believe – they are shown. but to those who dont believe they are going to be deceived by the forces that keep perpetuating their beliefs and they are going to only see things that back up their own way of seeing. and you might say im doing that to but im not – because i believe in God. That is the difference. It’s like if someone who sees an apparition of an angel or Jesus – you can’t make a non believer believe that- they don’t care – they don’t want to know. – there are forces that keep them where they are. yes evil forces – they were thrown down here with a third of the angels with satan and they are bound to the earth and God allows them to exist. They have a job – and their job is to deceive corrupt destroy etc. that’s their job. they are here because we have free will and we can choose either road. sounds like a fairy tale. guess again. demons are everywhere – so are angels. demons have been here for thousands of years and they are smarter than all of us put together. that is where faith comes in. starts as a series of coincidences after prayer for those who are truly seeking Jesus Christ. Then everything becomes so clear. So many coincidences, one after the other after the other after the other. Why God did it this way – i cant question it – but thats how he did it. wake up folks just like a child- science wont explain jack. i know what people are thinking and i dont care – call me a sheep – but in reality most of the world are cattle being lead into a slaughter. you are being tricked in so many ways – that if you just came back to Christ fully -me included- i’m just a sinner like anyone else., you would all see. i need a miracle everyday man and its weird how God shows them to you, so many times that after awhile – you believe. people want steven spielberg special effects to believe and some get those, but for most those who seek God are shown so many miracles and awesome things in other ways that you feel sorry for non believers. laugh, make fun of me – i dont care – ive heard it all – ive got friends with wings covered in light and they work for God, and they are beautiful. now wanna talk about the Holy Spirit?

one more thing – to get back on the issue of the ark of Noah. DR. Cargill and Dr. Randall Price, i really don’t know of you except of what i’ve been reading on the blogs since the latest Noah’s ark discovery. It sounds like both of these people are passionate about what you do and have been really fascinated about finding and proving real biblical finds, because like you say, false ones can cause harm to the world’s perception of believers in God etc. i get that. im no expert – these are just personal observations.

i just wanted to say that even if this is all a hoax – some of the facts that have led people to believe that it is a hoax dont themselves prove it is a hoax. for instance. they said there were cobwebs in the inside the ark when they found it and one dr. said that this disproves that it’s real because there are cobwebs in it at 13,000 feet. there could have been cobwebs when the ark landed – surely there were spiders in that thing when it landed – and cobwebs can survive indefinately. also on mt everest, they found spiders at 22,000 feet. now surely in the summer months at 13000 feet spiders could have easily gotten in there and made webs. ok?

my other point is that they said that they found the original beams at the black sea and transported them up to 13,000 feet? what ???- think about that. not possible. the trucks couldnt have gotten half that high and they hauled those beams all the way up to 13000 feet ???- possible, not likely in the extreeme. helicopters maybe – but there is no record of beams being transported up there via helicopter that i could find. – im not saying that this still isnt some elaborate hoax – im just saying that those particular facts dont hold up.

This could be a hoax or it might not – there isn’t any first hand proof either way, for it or against it. no proof, just hearsay and 2nd and 3rd party reports etc. i dont know on this – but peoples motives for saying this is a hoax or isnt – the reasons are many, selfish, ego, money, spiritual bias, political etc – not for me to say for sure, im just talking about a few facts.

Below is a form Noahs Ark Ministries had put out to recruit experts for next expedition to Structure on Mr. Ararat…PDF form at website….

Recruitment of Experts for an Expedition

Noah’s Ark Ministries International (NAMI) would like to recruit experts, scholars and scientists from around the world to join our team. Anyone who is capable to offer contributions for further exploration can reply our application form.

In addition, we will have an Exploration Forum for our latest search discovery in mid June, 2010 in Dogubayzait, Eastern Turkey to seek advice and methodology from experts for our next expedition. Interested parties are welcome to fill in their contact information below. Details of the Forum will be sent by email to those interested parties on or before 21st May. Please note that all participates of the Forum is responsible for all of their own expenses including travelling, meals, accommodations and etc.

*Please submit your full C.V. and an article within 400 words (preferably in English) to share your point of view for the latest discovery of NAMI on Mt. Ararat from your professional aspect.
*Please submit this form and all the required information by email: info@noahsarksearch.net

[…] Ark Ministries International is in partnership with The Media Evangelism Limited. According to Robert Cargill, The Media Evangelism Limited is in the business of using the media to promote the Kingdom of God. […]

I truly believe that noah’s ark don’t want to be found. let it be. when you get close, people just get hurt. just believe in the bible and just let it go. we still have animals lets be thankful for that.